I wonder why Facebook moved away from easy Twitter-style status posting. It used to be (about two versions ago) that the "what's on your mind" textbox was open by default and it was easy to post a status. For sometime now, you have to click "Status" first to do it, which almost seems like they'd like to discourage users from doing it?
Based on the analytics at a startup I used to work at, photos are a much better driver of user engagement than status updates. I'm guessing the same is true for facebook, and anecdotally, most of the facebook comments I receive are on photos and shared links, not status updates.
If the status update is mundane like "am eating a bagel" and you have a really funny photo of eating a bagel then the photo is definitely going to win the comment competition. If you use the status update intelligently, like tweeting about something that will interest your group then you can have a good discussion going on with just a few simple lines. Like a Tweet on FB Wall.
Actually from what I understand, only a small number of users got the change you're describing, and that happened when they introduced Questions (which neither I nor many of my friends have yet--I still have the "Twitter-style status posting")
I applied for the Questions beta months ago, but didn't hear anything back. I have the non-Twitter-style publisher including a link to post a question, however it doesn't actually work. Quite strange.
